A personal diary keeping people abreast of what I am working on writing-wise.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

THE GIRLS ARE NAKED AND THEY DANCE

Working late tonight. Joëlle Jones and I went out for Indian food with Geoffery Kleinman from DVDTalk. I had an excellent lamb with curry, and we sampled martinis infused with black tea, mixed with sweet and sour.

I've still got to do my eight-pager for the DC book. I pitched Jann four story ideas that I cooked up last night, two of which were fairly complete and two just half-baked concepts. She picked one of the half-baked. Now I've got about half of it written.

The idea was basically a frame story, as in, "We will have this one little tale as our thread, but the actual tale will be an analogue of it." The frame should point the way to what kind of story happens in response, but alas, that I do not yet have. So, when I say it is half-written, it is actually all too literal. Half of each page is actually written, and the other half...blank.

As I grow bleary eyed, I think it best to leave it for the night and resume in the morning. I have a basic seed to maybe start me, and so I will let it grow in th eback of my brain and see what blossoms tomorrow. The best writing lessons I ever received came from Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, and I always try to remember them.

"I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Don't worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.' [snip] It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it."

Of course, I rarely search for truth, instead seeking the most plausible lie. Likewise, the last bit is easier said than done. I tend to chew on stories the way I grind my teeth and chew the inside of my cheek...but yet, one must always strive.

Current Soundtrack: The Creation, The Best of... (Repertoire Records, 1999)

My confession...

Author of prose novels and comic books like Cut My Hair, It Girl & the Atomics, You Have Killed Me, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. Jamie's most recent novel is the serialized book Bobby Pins and Mary Janes, and his most recent graphic novels are the sci-fi romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Madame Frankenstein with Megan Levens; and the weird crime comic Archer Coe & the Thousand Natural Shocks with Dan Christensen. He also co-created Lady Killer with Joëlle Jones.